Abstract
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•Thirty (30) new derivatives of progesterone and testosterone have been synthesized.•The synthesized compounds were evaluated as potential anticancer agents.•MCF-7 and PC-3 cancer cell lines were used in the designed study.•Anti-inflammatory potential was also determined.•Docking studies were performed to rationalize the in vitro results.
Steroidal hormones progesterone and testosterone play a vital role in breast and prostate cancers. In this research, we have synthesized and characterized a total of thirty-one (31) new nitrogenous derivatives of progesterone and testosterone. The synthesized derivatives (1–31) were screened for their anti-cancer potential against MCF-7 and PC-3 cell lines of breast using MTT assay. The compounds 1-31exhibited significant inhibitory potentials against MCF-7 and PC-3 cell lines. In MCF-7 assay, compound 17 displayed IC50 value of 04 ± 0.02 μM while compound 18 was leading in PC-3 assay with IC50 of 03.14 ± 0.4 μM. Tamoxifen was used as positive control which exhibited an IC50of 0.12 ± 0.03 and 0.26 ± 0.01 μM against MCF-7 and PC-3 respectively. The compounds also showed good anti-inflammatory activity according to oxidative burst inhibition by chemiluminescence technique where ibuprofen was used as positive control with 73.2 ± 1.4% ROS inhibition. The compounds showed the percent ROS inhibition between 23.2 ± 0.2 and −3.2 ± 4.1. The results of the compounds were compared with the positive control ibuprofen. Molecular docking correlations suggest that the compounds exerted their inhibitory activity by binding to the active of the enzyme.